We reported yesterday that some Huawei and Honor smartphone users were noticing that images downloaded through the Twitter application were being deleted. The devices in question were purchased and being used in China, leading some to speculate that this was an intended feature to help Huawei comply with China’s Twitter ban. While the issue only showed up after a system update was installed on the devices, it appears that the deletion of the images is merely a bug.

A statement from Huawei appears to clarify what’s really going on. The latest Twitter builds (versions 7.78.0 and 7.77.0) simply aren’t playing nice with certain Huawei and Honor smartphones. When an image is downloaded through the Twitter application, a folder is created on the device which matches the file name and then is promptly deleted. As intended, Huawei’s image protection alert is triggered which notifies the user that the image has been deleted. However, the images downloaded from Twitter aren’t ever deleted and are still available under File Manage > Picture > Twitter.

For any followers noticing Twitter app "deleting" images on their Huawei phone – official statement from Huawei – (they're not deleted, just moved to a different folder). pic.twitter.com/Px7H3LyRpZ

Huawei is working with Twitter to resolve this issue. It’s unclear is an update to the Twitter app will be able to put this mess behind us of if Huawei will need to issue a new software update to the affected devices. One thing’s certain, we can all breathe a sigh of relief knowing that Huawei isn’t intentionally deleting Twitter images from its smartphones.

While Samsung’s flagship smartphones are possibly one of its more popular handsets, the company has also been known to put out quite a few rugged handsets aimed at users who might be able to appreciate such protection.